The key words for our purposes here are unnoticed and value. There’s somewhere between fourteen and ninety-two different reasons why you’ll be playing for your league championship come September. The first is luck. The second is more luck. The third is luckily avoiding injuries to your core group of stars. The fourth is waiver wire luck. The fifth is the ability to look beyond the obvious names that’ll be gone in the first ten rounds on draft day and spotting the sleepers. The sixth might be skill, but I’m pretty sure it too is luck…and so on…

Some fantasy baseball leagues are won and lost before the first player is drafted. This is because of an oft-neglected element of fantasy team building that (unless you’re playing for a lot of money) is just as important as home runs, wins and losses. That element is of course, team name selection. Even if you come in last place because you made Antonio Bastardo your first round draft pick, a clever name for your team can still make you the class of your league. When it comes down to it, fantasy baseball is about outsmarting your friends and co-workers (and maybe having fun, I guess) - a clever team name is just one more element to that.

Reports from Tampa indicate Alex Rodriguez will attempt to play this season with a torn labrum in his hip. If he opts for surgery, recovery could take from six weeks to four months depending on your source.

For those who have already drafted or are in keeper formats and are the proud owners of A-Rod, all you can do at this stage is rub the nearest rabbit’s foot and hope that he can avoid surgery until after the season. Even at 75%, A-Rod should still compile numbers to keep him among the top players at the third base position.

The best fantasy baseball teams are not just made by the easy early selections. It’s easy to say you want Alex Rodriguez and CC Sabathia - everyone does. But the picks that really make your team are the tough choices you make after the easy decisions have been made. There’s a difference between being optimistic, and being ridiculous; so don’t pin your hopes on the big Eric Gagne and Andruw Jones bounceback years. There are some players who suffered injuries or other problems that held them back last year, but should now be behind them. Allow them to be the aces up your sleeve for the later rounds of your draft, when everyone else has run out of ideas.